Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall
“Stasiland demonstrates that great, original reporting is still possible. . . . A heartbreaking, beautifully written book. A classic.” — Claire Tomalin, Guardian “Books of the Year”
Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction: a powerfully moving account of people who heroically resisted the communist dictatorship of East Germany, and of people who worked for its secret police, the Stasi.
Anna Funder delivers a prize-winning and powerfully rendered account of the resistance against the German Democratic Republic’s communist dictatorship in these harrowing, personal tales of life behind the Iron Curtain—and, especially, of life under the iron fist of the Stasi, East Germany’s brutal state security force in one of history's most notorious surveillance states. In the tradition of Frederick Taylor’s The Berlin Wall and Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families, Funder’s Stasiland is a masterpiece of investigative reporting and a vital work of twentieth-century history, written with novelistic vividness and the compelling intensity of a universal, real-life story.
Through meticulous reporting, Funder reveals the haunting reality of life in the GDR—a world of quiet heroes, conflicted enforcers, and the ghosts left behind by a fallen state.
- A Chilling Surveillance State: Delve into the inner workings of the Stasi, a secret police force that used everything from collecting “smell samples” in jars to a vast network of informers to control the populace.
- Unforgettable True Stories: Meet Miriam, who became an Enemy of the State at sixteen for distributing leaflets, and Frau Paul, who made an impossible choice to protect a stranger at the cost of seeing her own critically ill child.
- Life Behind the Berlin Wall: Experience the strange, often absurd reality of the German Democratic Republic, a country that no longer exists but whose secrets still haunt the present day.
- The Perpetrators’ Perspective: Hear directly from the men who served the regime, from professors who taught the art of recruiting informers to the officer who physically painted the line where the Wall would be built.
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Community Reviews
1 Berlin, Winter 1996
6/10
Author visits the main stasi building in 1996. It's a museum. It's good writing and engaging storytelling, but this is just 2 stories about her meeting 2 middle-aged women. It's just her small experiences.
2 Miriam
5/10
The authors interviews a woman who put up some vague protest leaflets with her friends and they were thrown in prison for a month for it so that they could get tired and confess. Sleep deprivation is used as torture. So what? What's the story here?
3 Bornholmer Bridge
6/10
The 16-year-old woman tries to escape East Germany. She travels to Berlin and crawls over the fence. A dog spots her, but doesn't lead the soldier to her. She then steps into a tripwire and starts an alarm. They arrest her and don't let her sleep for 10 days so that she will tell them who helped her. But no one did so she makes up a story.
4 Charlie
6/10
She marries and they tell her that her husband hung himself in his cell. All these prisoners are basically there because they tried to escape. She of course thinks that he may have been killed and the author goes over how she wants to investigate this post the union.
5 The Linoleum Palace
5/10
She rambles about going into modern stores. Kinda pointless.
6 Stasi HQ
7/10
Protests in East Germany against the leadership and the stasi. The Berlin Wall falls.
7 The Smell of Old Men
6/10
More museum observations.
8 Telephone Calls
5,5/10
Interview with an old communist who wants East Germany back. Rather random modern experiences.
9 Julia Has No Story
6/10
Interview with Julia. Again focuses on the current time and how she is now.
10 The Italian Boyfriend
6/10
Well, the title says it all. Julia talks about her Italian boyfriend and how she was unemployed even after being a top student as no one wanted to hire a woman with a foreign boyfriend and stasi also tried to talk her and her parents out of it.
11 Major N.
6,5/10
Julie is called into a meeting. All the transcribed letters she sent to her boyfriend in Italy are read to her by a middle-aged man. Super creepy. She finally is told to call another state agency and when they do this man and his agency get into trouble for this. The different state agencies are not all ruled by the same men.
12 The Lipsi
6/10
She watches Tv shows shows from East Berlin. A propaganda man is the main TV pundit, manipulating everything.
13 Von Schni—
0/10
Interviews the TV pundit. He's still a communist. He refuses to criticise East Germany even though he says he doesn't care about the nation itself.
14 The Worse You Feel
0/10
The woman she interviews talks about an attack. Not sure why this is about East Germany? The book is weird.
15 Herr Christian
0/10
Stasi spy interviewed. Very few details. The main story is a page long here about how he was capturing people who wanted to escape. The rest is about his current life.
16 Socialist Man
6,5/10
WW2 vet imprisoned by communists and only let out if he is willing to join the communist party. His son grows up a communist therefore serving the state blindly.
17 Drawing the Line
7,5/10
The communist son dates and then marries a pretty young girl. She's not in the communist party so his managers tell him not to marry her. He still does. They put him in prison and force her to divorce him by making her sign the divorce papers while telling her that her husband is a porn maker. A false accusation. They later remarry when he finds out she was forced to divorce him.
18 The Plate
7/10
He steals some small plate in revenge. After the reunification he gives a short interview revealing this and government workers visit him to take it back even though it's basically worth nothing. They also charge him with lying to his former employee about not knowing where the plate was, lying to the communist state. Even though it doesn't even exist anymore criminal proceedings are made against him.
19 Klaus
7/10
About a band playing Western rock and roll covers and getting banned. They don't get the lyrics, but the style is just too much. The government workers say they are not banned just that they don't exist anymore.
The stasi makes a fake band playing their song with state lyrics.
20 Herr Bock of Golm
6/10
So many stasi agents that some religious groups have 60% spies and grow so big that they actually dare to protest.
21 Frau Paul
5,5/10
A mom plans to escape with her sick son. But as all the rest they are found out and punished.
22 The Deal
6/10
A woman is brought in. They make a deal with her. But she refuses to work with the stasi against innocent people.
23 Hohenschönhausen
5,5/10
More small stories. Mostly about the sick son.
24 Herr Bohnsack
6/10
About a stasi worker. He burned their documents before the state collapsed. They started doing this in a huge degree after the collapse to hide names of civilians who gave them info.
25 Berlin, Spring 2000
6/10
Small interview stories. One dude talks about the rising immigrant crime rate post the union. Kinda getting tired of this review structure as there is no analysis by me. A mistake.
26 The Wall
5/10
Small interview stories.
27 Puzzlers
5/10
Small interview stories.
28 Miriam and Charlie
5/10
Small interview stories.
My final opinion on the book
I relistened a lot to past chapters as I want to review them. But it's not that I didn't get all of it. It's just that I wanted to write a small summary for each chapter and very often didn't quite get when a chapter ended. At the end I grew tired of it as it's rather pointless. It's frankly not worth it as there is too much noise in the book. She's traveling to Germany at least 2 times, I think. It's a lot of stories about how she interviewed former East Germans and then their stories about their past. But it's messy and hard to fully get into unless you are fully focused. She's constantly jumping from time to time to person to person. And she has a huge need to talk about her own feelings while visiting these people. Without us seeing her there it feels rather pointless and doesn't add anything to the book.
This book is more about her personal project and experiences than it is a book about East Germany or the people there. Mostly she focuses on how weird these people are and how much suffering the communist regime caused them. Stasis are evil. The people who wanted to escape are great, but now clearly mentally a bit off because of the regime - according to her narration. They all are kinda lost in the Western state as they are not as successful as they would want to be. They also complain about the rising crime rate because of immigrants and fewer government people keeping the structure. This really should have been a documentary or a interview series on video. Not a book.
I mean, the book is quirky and fun because of that. But I wanted to learn about East Germany not read a diary. I guess it's the difference between how men and women want to learn about things. I like personal observations and emotions, but not when it takes over and becomes the main story element. The book is all over the place. But then maybe not if you consider it a diary.
6/10
Author visits the main stasi building in 1996. It's a museum. It's good writing and engaging storytelling, but this is just 2 stories about her meeting 2 middle-aged women. It's just her small experiences.
2 Miriam
5/10
The authors interviews a woman who put up some vague protest leaflets with her friends and they were thrown in prison for a month for it so that they could get tired and confess. Sleep deprivation is used as torture. So what? What's the story here?
3 Bornholmer Bridge
6/10
The 16-year-old woman tries to escape East Germany. She travels to Berlin and crawls over the fence. A dog spots her, but doesn't lead the soldier to her. She then steps into a tripwire and starts an alarm. They arrest her and don't let her sleep for 10 days so that she will tell them who helped her. But no one did so she makes up a story.
4 Charlie
6/10
She marries and they tell her that her husband hung himself in his cell. All these prisoners are basically there because they tried to escape. She of course thinks that he may have been killed and the author goes over how she wants to investigate this post the union.
5 The Linoleum Palace
5/10
She rambles about going into modern stores. Kinda pointless.
6 Stasi HQ
7/10
Protests in East Germany against the leadership and the stasi. The Berlin Wall falls.
7 The Smell of Old Men
6/10
More museum observations.
8 Telephone Calls
5,5/10
Interview with an old communist who wants East Germany back. Rather random modern experiences.
9 Julia Has No Story
6/10
Interview with Julia. Again focuses on the current time and how she is now.
10 The Italian Boyfriend
6/10
Well, the title says it all. Julia talks about her Italian boyfriend and how she was unemployed even after being a top student as no one wanted to hire a woman with a foreign boyfriend and stasi also tried to talk her and her parents out of it.
11 Major N.
6,5/10
Julie is called into a meeting. All the transcribed letters she sent to her boyfriend in Italy are read to her by a middle-aged man. Super creepy. She finally is told to call another state agency and when they do this man and his agency get into trouble for this. The different state agencies are not all ruled by the same men.
12 The Lipsi
6/10
She watches Tv shows shows from East Berlin. A propaganda man is the main TV pundit, manipulating everything.
13 Von Schni—
0/10
Interviews the TV pundit. He's still a communist. He refuses to criticise East Germany even though he says he doesn't care about the nation itself.
14 The Worse You Feel
0/10
The woman she interviews talks about an attack. Not sure why this is about East Germany? The book is weird.
15 Herr Christian
0/10
Stasi spy interviewed. Very few details. The main story is a page long here about how he was capturing people who wanted to escape. The rest is about his current life.
16 Socialist Man
6,5/10
WW2 vet imprisoned by communists and only let out if he is willing to join the communist party. His son grows up a communist therefore serving the state blindly.
17 Drawing the Line
7,5/10
The communist son dates and then marries a pretty young girl. She's not in the communist party so his managers tell him not to marry her. He still does. They put him in prison and force her to divorce him by making her sign the divorce papers while telling her that her husband is a porn maker. A false accusation. They later remarry when he finds out she was forced to divorce him.
18 The Plate
7/10
He steals some small plate in revenge. After the reunification he gives a short interview revealing this and government workers visit him to take it back even though it's basically worth nothing. They also charge him with lying to his former employee about not knowing where the plate was, lying to the communist state. Even though it doesn't even exist anymore criminal proceedings are made against him.
19 Klaus
7/10
About a band playing Western rock and roll covers and getting banned. They don't get the lyrics, but the style is just too much. The government workers say they are not banned just that they don't exist anymore.
The stasi makes a fake band playing their song with state lyrics.
20 Herr Bock of Golm
6/10
So many stasi agents that some religious groups have 60% spies and grow so big that they actually dare to protest.
21 Frau Paul
5,5/10
A mom plans to escape with her sick son. But as all the rest they are found out and punished.
22 The Deal
6/10
A woman is brought in. They make a deal with her. But she refuses to work with the stasi against innocent people.
23 Hohenschönhausen
5,5/10
More small stories. Mostly about the sick son.
24 Herr Bohnsack
6/10
About a stasi worker. He burned their documents before the state collapsed. They started doing this in a huge degree after the collapse to hide names of civilians who gave them info.
25 Berlin, Spring 2000
6/10
Small interview stories. One dude talks about the rising immigrant crime rate post the union. Kinda getting tired of this review structure as there is no analysis by me. A mistake.
26 The Wall
5/10
Small interview stories.
27 Puzzlers
5/10
Small interview stories.
28 Miriam and Charlie
5/10
Small interview stories.
My final opinion on the book
I relistened a lot to past chapters as I want to review them. But it's not that I didn't get all of it. It's just that I wanted to write a small summary for each chapter and very often didn't quite get when a chapter ended. At the end I grew tired of it as it's rather pointless. It's frankly not worth it as there is too much noise in the book. She's traveling to Germany at least 2 times, I think. It's a lot of stories about how she interviewed former East Germans and then their stories about their past. But it's messy and hard to fully get into unless you are fully focused. She's constantly jumping from time to time to person to person. And she has a huge need to talk about her own feelings while visiting these people. Without us seeing her there it feels rather pointless and doesn't add anything to the book.
This book is more about her personal project and experiences than it is a book about East Germany or the people there. Mostly she focuses on how weird these people are and how much suffering the communist regime caused them. Stasis are evil. The people who wanted to escape are great, but now clearly mentally a bit off because of the regime - according to her narration. They all are kinda lost in the Western state as they are not as successful as they would want to be. They also complain about the rising crime rate because of immigrants and fewer government people keeping the structure. This really should have been a documentary or a interview series on video. Not a book.
I mean, the book is quirky and fun because of that. But I wanted to learn about East Germany not read a diary. I guess it's the difference between how men and women want to learn about things. I like personal observations and emotions, but not when it takes over and becomes the main story element. The book is all over the place. But then maybe not if you consider it a diary.
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